The Position and Role of Audiovisual in Medical Education. - Researches

Introduction

In the last decades educational organizations have faced great changes in order to encounter its serious crisis i.e. the huge increase in the number of students with an obvious lack of teachers and educational space. Therefore it has sought help from new tools, material and methods of communication.

Although we know that these tools that make it possible to educate students in larger extents and better quality than traditional methods are not able to solve the problem on their own, but its comparable values to the other methods are unassailable. In past good teaching was considered as the most important key in education, whilst nowadays with all the technologic progression and new methods and tools it is necessary to add new aspects to educational science. Audiovisual has progressed very fast using the new technology and is employed very extensively in education.

Educational technology, which is a science that tries to help educational organizations to get to their objectives as fast as possible, and using the tools like photos, slides, tapes, video, computer and media have aided the organizations with a great deal in solving their problems. Unfortunately due to various reasons this new technology and tool i.e. audiovisual hasn't progressed sufficiently in Iran and more specifically in University of Tehran. It is really disappointing for Iranian student to have to be content with hand written copies in an era that other students and researchers keep pace with momentary growing science through constant touch with new papers, findings and researches. The audiovisual subject includes several issues and various matters that first of all would give the students and lecturers a positive view about audiovisual and secondly would help them to employ audiovisual in its best possible extent considering the limitations of facilities in our country.

We hope that new start of medical school audiovisual center and the great effort which has been started in association with the Student Research Center will be a beginning of offering different audiovisual services to the students and the lecturers. This will be with publishing new papers and holding audiovisual educating courses. We are ready to hear all the comments from interested students, researchers and lecturers.

What is Audiovisual?

We all more or less have heard the word audio visual. It is usually talked about as a good device to help tackling problems and complications surrounding our education system. There is no worry over public acquaintance with audiovisual or having enough experienced people in this area; the question is the perception of the lecturers, students and responsible bodies about audiovisual and how they look at it. Is it only a collection of equipments like projector, slide, camera, video camera, overhead and opaque? Are these equipments only for commercial use and to make the educational places look professional and beautiful? Surly it wouldn't be that way. Audiovisual is a way to make proper connections between different parts of education system, and to keep these connections effective and steady.

Definition: Audiovisual is made of two words; Audio and Visual

Audio: It includes all the educational experiences obtained from hearing.

Visual: It is all the educational experiences one gets through seeing.

Therefore audio visual is all the educational experiences that one gets by either hearing or seeing. Ears and eyes play more important roles in learning than other senses. 3% of the information we get from around us is through smelling, 3% through tasting, 6% through touching, 13% through hearing and 75% through vision.

According to above definition all the equipments which are included in learning and educating like book, film and black board are a part of audiovisual. Every day some new equipment comes to the market and teachers or educators also invent tools that are suitable for their kind of education and their students.

Some people use the phrase "Education Aids" lately instead of audiovisual. There is no doubt in auxiliary role of audiovisual in facilitating learning and teaching the most difficult and complicated matters, and the ones who use audiovisual more and dependently admit to this more than anybody else. However audiovisual education is not and shouldn't be limited to describing the tools, equipments and materials it uses. In recent years that audiovisual training is considered as a scientific matter, researchers who have studied the matter scientifically have confirmed that what has been used to define audiovisual is insufficient and sometimes unreal. Whereas a correct, substantial and scientific definition is a strong base necessary for any scientific frame work and considering this has not been done properly for audiovisual, this matter hasn't been able to play its real and effective role. Many of Education scientists believe that the most important characteristic of a good lecturer is their ability to transfer the educational objectives to the students and make them understand the subject. This is through a good communication with the students. A successful lecturer is the one who is able to make good connection to students using suitable audiovisual device.

Audiovisual training is not only advertising for using visual equipments such as photo and slide and film, but in making good communication with the students it recommends both verbal and visual experiences. Although they have said that "a picture's value is equal to ten thousands words", but sometimes a picture is so vague that thousands of words are needed to clarify it.

The history of audiovisual

The history of audiovisual is not separate from the modern education system history. From 177^th century onward the scientist who had revolutionary thoughts insisted on and justified the need for basic changes in education system and the methods that it uses. These scientists pointed to the use of students' senses for the first time so they could be counted as the first audiovisual promoters. The first great teacher who paid notice to the value of audio visual materials in education was Komnious the Czech scientist who started the idea of illustration of educational books. Some of the ideas of this great scientist included:

v Education shouldn't be boring for students.

v Group education is better than teaching to individuals.

v Illustrated books and verity of books is necessary for a better and more effective teaching.

v In teaching real objects should be used more than anything else.

v In order to teach new subjects to the students, it is essential to make their minds ready for it first.

v A suitable environment for education is a pleasant environment.

After this scientist Jean Jacques Rousseau, the famous French scientist, made effective strides in innovating new believes and ideas in education.

Any way all these most famous initiatives of modern education have stressed on making better and more effective use of ears and eyes in teaching and communication.

The role of audiovisual materials

Now we want to discuss the role that audiovisual equipments could play or the service they can offer. It is necessary to remind that none of audiovisual equipments or materials is able to do all the jobs we expect from audiovisual on their own. On the other hand some of the tools could serve more than one purpose depending on the situation.

In audiovisual training we are interested in learning the best and most effective ways of communication and transferring the information. In other word we want to see how a teacher can transfer the subject better and more effectively to the students and in this transference what role is played by audiovisual tools.

It has been years since education scientists and researchers, especially the ones who have focused on audiovisual, are trying to clarify the value of using audiovisual materials through scientific studies, so that the teachers and lecturers are encouraged to use them more substantially.

Referring to these researches has two benefits: first, the teacher realizes that using audiovisual is not only for conformity or being fashionable, more over it is to teach more effectively and time efficiently. Secondly, by taking advantage of the results of those researchers, one could convince the responsible bodies and managers that the budget that is spend for audiovisual equipments and materials is not wasted, rather will be of great beneficial to both teacher and student. According to Professor Edgar Deal, twenty years ago our ideas about the advantage of audiovisual was based on guesses and hypotheses, but now after years of study and research what we say has a strong basis. In 1949, The National Community Association of Education in USA after studying all the researches done for 30 years regarding audiovisual education summarized the results as following.

Audiovisual equipments and materials:

Ø Will make a concrete basis for thought and conception so will reduce the verbal reactions of the students.

Ø Are interesting for the students and will make them concentrate on the main subject.

Ø Will make a basis for gradual and complementary learning so the learning will be long lasting.

Ø Will offer real experiences to the students, therefore encourages them to activity.

Ø Will cause contingency of thoughts.

Ø Are positively influential in development of students' minds and will expand their vocabulary.

Ø Will teach skills to the students completely and parallel to their knowledge.

Ø Will make some experiences exposed to the students that they wouldn't be able to achieve in any other way, therefore will increase the depth and evolution and diversity of their learning. These experiences include:

· Events which are difficult to experience the details of them due to slowness of their movement and development, like cellular division or insect moves (using especial camera techniques.).

· Events that we can't see in details due to fast movement or development, like bee wing (using fast video techniques.).

· Events that cant present in a class, like operative surgery in a theater.

· Subjects that can't be observed with naked eye due to their small size, like a microbe.

· Subjects that are far away from us like a laboratory in another country.

· Events which are basically not accessible like blood circulation in our vessels.

In recent years invaluable experiences that scientists have done regarding using audiovisual equipments and materials have prove them further values for audiovisual which include:

These equipments and materials:

o Will bring specialists to the classroom.

o Will expand the students' experiences.

o Are great mind stimulants.

o Will accommodate the students and the lecturers with a great source of information.

Difficulties and Limitations

The difficulties which accompany using audiovisual equipment have been noticed by the audiovisual promoters from the beginning. These difficulties differ depending on the local characteristics of different countries and areas. According to a study that was done by some students regarding disadvantages and difficulties that surrounds using audiovisual tools and materials, some of the limitations and complications our teachers and lecturers face are as follows..

◊ Having audiovisual equipments needs money to buy them. Our educational units are short of this money most of the time.

◊ Many of our lecturers and even educational authorities do not believe in the value of audiovisual, and many are not properly guided about how to use these equipments. In most our educational units there are not any skillful bodies to give the lecturers suitable instructions to use the equipments or to do the job for them or even to buy the materials and tools they need however simple or cheep they are.

◊ The lecturers would need to use more time and energy to make the materials ready for audiovisual purpose. This time is not included in their working hours.

◊ The lecturers have difficulties including preparation the materials before the class and learning how to start the equipments use them properly.

◊ The class environment is not suitable for using the equipments for example there might not be an electricity plug available in the classroom or mostly the classrooms are so small that the equipment can't be used comfortably and properly.

◊ Most of the time the equipments have to be transferred to the classroom which is inconvenient and also might damage the equipments. This would be easier if there was a storing place in the classroom for them.

◊ The available equipment and materials are much less than sufficient considering the number of classes and students and the usage frequency.

◊ Many people have wrong ideas about audiovisual and think they are only luxury equipment or toys.

Recommendations

Enrichment of the audiovisual center of School of Medicine and facilitating it with modern equipment, as the central unit of audiovisual so that it could be used by the students and the lecturers serve them in place, or in order to set up audiovisual units in affiliated hospitals..
Expanding the central archive of photographs, films, tape and slides in School of Medicine and establishment of local archives in each affiliated unit and also initiation of video clubs for educational films.
Setting up training courses for lecturers and students and also re-training courses for the audiovisual personnel regarding modern audiovisual technology (This has already started).

Published in: THE JOURNAL OF FACULTY OF MEDICINE, 52^ndd Year, Numbers 1and 2, Nov. 1994.
By: E. Razmpa, MD.